Sen. Warren vows to push for minimum wage hike

Monday

Feb 10, 2014 at 11:43 PMFeb 10, 2014 at 11:49 PM

Michael Gagne Herald News Staff Reporter @HNMikeGagne

BOSTON — Saying "full-time employment should not mean full-time poverty," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., joined by local fast-food restaurant Boloco co-founder and former CEO John Pepper and U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., promised she would push for raising the federal minimum wage and encouraged lawmakers in Massachusetts to raise the state's minimum wage.

The three discussed the issue at Boloco's Congress Street location, in the middle of the city's financial district. Members of the media squeezed into the restaurant's small dining area to hear the conversation, while Boloco employees could be seen in the background making burritos and wraps and tending to customers.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. In Massachusetts, it's $8 an hour. At Boloco, $9 an hour is the "absolute salary floor" as Pepper phrased it. For supervisors in the company, that floor is $11 per hour.

But, Pepper said, it should not be up to businesses like Boloco to set their own minimum wages. "The government and states should be the ones increasing the floor," he said.

The discussion is ongoing. In Massachusetts, the state Senate approved a bill last November that would incrementally increase the state's minimum wage each year, until it reaches $11 per hour in 2016. That bill awaits a debate and vote in the House of Representatives.

Warren and Durbin both back another bill under consideration in Washington that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour.

Durbin said it's a bipartisan issue. While the general perception is that most minimum wage jobs are staffed by teenagers and other students, the "average age is 35 of those receiving minimum wages. So this notion that it's a starter job doesn't apply to minimum wage," Durbin said.

Emmanuel Sebit, a 21-year-old from South Sudan, said he left for the United States a year ago with the misguided notion that "you'll go to work, you'll go to school and you'll have your own life."

Sebit, who is studying to one day become a lawyer, works as a luggage handler at Logan International Airport 30 hours a week. He said he can't afford the costs of rent, education and food.

"At the end of the day, I still get food stamps," Sebit said.

Lawrence McCain of Dorchester said he used to work as a "skilled machinist" making $16 an hour. He became unemployed when the economy slowed five years ago. He works at Logan, making "eight dollars and 30 cents."

Michael Speing, 29, said he has been working in restaurants for 14 years. He holds a graduate degree, and noted that the minimum wage for employees whose income is derived from tips has not increased since the first Bush administration. Speing said he and other restaurant wait staff have struggled.

"For 13 years, I lived off of credit cards," Speing said. "And then I used student loans to pay those off."

Warren chimed in on his point: "$2.13 an hour. Think about that. It's been 23 years since the last time that was raised."

No one in opposition to raising the minimum wage spoke or appeared to have been present for the event. Other speakers said raising the minimum wage would also positively affect businesses, because more employees would have have money to spend. It used to be that wage increases would parallel inflation rates, according to one man, who said that since the 1970s wages have "flatlined," while productivity has increased.